The press conference has wrapped up now. But earlier today, our reporter Grace Burmas visited the Wheatbelt town of Dowerin 156km north-east of Perth.

Jim Davidson runs a trading and safety business in town and says while this outage is extreme, issues like it are becoming commonplace in the Wheatbelt.

“We seem to have unexplained outages with Telstra and with Western Power on a very regular basis up here,” he said.

Locals haven't had the luxury of cooling off at the swimming pool, after the shire was forced to lock the gates due to the outages.

Temperatures in Dowerin have been high with residents having to find new ways to cool down.

“Garden hose or the shower,” Mr Davidson said.

“We’ve been up around the 40 [degree mark] for the last, over a week, ten days.”